Ask the Readers: How Do I Motivate My Boyfriend to Save Money?

Although we cover the topic once or twice a year, I constantly get questions from people who are frustrated by the financial habits of their spouses and partners. Some people are Spenders, and some people are Savers. What can you do to get both partners on the same page?

Linda is the most recent GRS reader with a relationship issue. She wrote to ask how to get her boyfriend motivated to save money. Here’s her story:

How do I get someone motivated about saving money and being more frugal? Is it even possible?

My fiance and I are pretty different when it comes to money. I’m the Saver, and he’s the Spender. I’m all about the future, and he’s more about the present. He changed a lot after we got together, and now that we’re saving for a wedding, he has definitely cut back on most of the big expenses.

But I get frustrated that although he speaks of saving money and of eventually buying a house, he’s always wanting to eat out, to get the latest gadgets (he’s switched cell phones three times in two years, and bought a MacBook and an iPad), and to go on vacation. He’s a poster child for the latte factor: He has a gold card from Starbucks, which shows how much he frequents it.

His last job had really good pay, but not his current one, so that may also contribute to the spending habit. (He’s used to what he used to spend and hasn’t made the adjustment.) I’m not sure if I’m just giving him a hard time, or if there’s just some thing I’m not doing right. Do you have any advice?

First, Linda needs to know that it is possible for a Spender to become a Saver. I was a Spender for decades, but my wife is a Saver. In fact, Kris could have written this e-mail twenty years ago. Now, though, I’ve changed. I still have Spender tendencies (do they ever go away?), but they’re over-ruled by my new Saver habits.

But I didn’t get here overnight. It took time. And there were a lot of missteps along the way.

I made plenty of false starts toward frugality during the late nineties and early aughts, but I didn’t really change until I hit rock bottom. When we bought our house in 2004, I was overwhelmed by my debt and expenses. It was then that I was finally ready to “find religion”.

From the folks I’ve talked to, that’s a common theme: It’s tough to get somebody else to change until they’re ready to change. The motivation has to come from within. The question, then, is how do you inspire somebody to change their financial habits? I don’t know if there’s any one right answer. (But maybe readers can share what worked for them, or what worked for the people they know.)

Now, goals keep me going. I’ve learned that there are trade-offs. Sure, I want to buy books and comics and gadgets and expensive restaurant meals. And I do buy some of these things. But once I sat down and decided what was most important to me, it became easier for me to save.

Lately, I’ve been using travel as an example. I love to travel. Like George Bailey, I want to see the world. Because this goal is always with me (and I literally think of it every hour of every day now), it’s easy for me to make smarter choices. In fact, it motivates me to find new ways to save.

So, how can Linda help her boyfriend save money and become more frugal? I think she has to find a way to show him how his present choices affect his future options. Talk with him about what his big goals are — does he want to travel? own a business? go back to school? — and then discuss what it takes to get there. Until he understands that what he does today affects what he can do tomorrow, he’s not likely to change. (One sneaky way to try to get the point across is for Linda to talk about one of her goals, asking her boyfriend to help her figure out how to achieve it — even if she knows the answer already.)

What do you think? How do you motivate a spouse or partner to become better with money? For years, Kris tried to help me see the light, but I wasn’t ready. What could she have done differently? What can Linda do to help her boyfriend?

I’m a cautious spender — I struggle to look far enough down the road to make saving worthwhile, but I’m also very concerned about keeping my spending under control.

My husband is a saver to the point of being a miser if I weren’t around. The only things he spends money on are me and our ferrets.

For us, it really, really helps to have a budget. If you have pooled your finances, then sit down together and work out a plan. What do you save? How much do you spend on groceries/clothes/utilities? And earmark an agreed-on amount of fun spending money for both of you. Then he can spend up to a point with no strings attached, and you can relax about where that money’s going.

And you know what? I’m reaping the benefits already of my husband’s long term vision, and I’m coming around. I’m still easily distracted, but I know I can’t be distracted over my earmarked fun money.

But like others have said, before doing that — ask if you love him just the way he is, even if he never, ever changes. Can you share your life and any future kids with him as is? Then I’d say go ahead and try to work out a budget but respect the person he is. Everyone will be happier that way.

Before my husband and I got married, we were required to do an “engaged encounter” weekend. It’s literally an entire weekend talking and writing and sharing about yourselves, each other, your priorities and your future together.

One of the pages in the workbook we used had a list of items people tend to value in life. We were instructed to order them from most important to least important to us. The top three were to be things that we couldn’t live without. The bottom three were items that we could give up if we had to. We each ordered our lists privately, then compared.

It was a really illuminating exercise. Given that spending is all about priorities, I would consider trying a similar exercise yourselves. You could create a list with things that either of you enjoy spending money on: dinners out, new clothes, computers, vacations, real estate, etc, then take the time to order the list separately. The beauty of it is that there are no wrong answers. Since personal finance is all about priorities, you could use your lists to help create a budget that both of you can live with.

I often get frustrated with my DH for what seems like a *lot* of extraneous spending. I used to really nag him after getting a cc bill about how we (I was trying to not dump totally on him) absolutely had to stop whipping out the cc for every little thing and spending all our money and them some every month. His reaction was (understandably) to get defensive and make cracks like, “For all the money you say we’ve spent, we sure don’t have much to show for it!” which would floor me considering our house at that time should’ve been on Hoarders.

Anyway, slowly but surely he has refrained from random spending and has tried to focus on things truly important to him (motorcycles and musician gear). Meanwhile, I have tried to be a lot more fair in my assessments of what he does.

While he seems to me to spend a lot on stuff that I don’t give whit about (motorcycles and guitars), he also saves us a lot of money in other areas. He used to be a mechanic in his pre-college days, and he’s saved us a bundle over the years on car costs. He also has a fair electrical background and has saved us yet another bundle in wiring repairs, lighting, fixing the stove, and other similar situations. Where I would’ve tossed the item completely and spent $500 on a new one, he was able to repair the item for $10 and a little labor.

So I guess what I’m suggesting is trying to step back and see if the fiance is really just a spender or actually someone who may spend in some areas but save a lot in other ways.

I know that I consider myself the saver, and I handle our finances and watch every penny, but that hasn’t stopped me from making some astronomically stupid (and wasteful) purchases during our marriage.

It often does work both ways and the key is trying to see the bigger picture.

First of all, you have to decide if you can live with him EXACTLY AS HE IS. If the way he is NOW is going to be a problem LATER, you might need to rethink the wedding. People don’t change unless THEY want to.

And if he does want to change, you will still need patience, and you will need to appreciate what he has to offer other than money. My husband has been terribly irresponsible in the past; unpaid taxes, credit card debt, bankruptcy. He’s much better now but still a spender. He’s paying down IRS debt and he doesn’t have much left over, and he’s unwilling to give up fun. This is fine with me because I’m always quick to give up fun and that is no way to live either. I do the saving now – I am paying for our new roof and our trip to Scotland – and he pays for happy hours etc. He doesn’t like things they way they are, so he’s working on it. In the meantime we’re still able to have a happy relationship because I’m not hung up on whether he’s paying (or saving) his “share”.

I’m curious about the idea of personal debt for legally married people – isn’t the spouse still responsible, in the end? I know a number of families that discovered on divorce there were no assets because one got unilaterally in debt. Are there states where debts aren’t shared in marriage?

I completely agree with Johanna and a lot of others comment’s that we might not have the whole picture and she may be trying to change him too much. If you have a fiancee who has gone from maybe living paycheck to paycheck and changed it so that he has now started saving for a wedding and possible down payment then I think that she needs to maybe back off of him a little bit. Had he done nothing that is one thing but to me if seems like she says we need to say 20% and he came up to 15%. Marriage etc is about compromise and I think she needs to compromise possibly a little as well. Again we don’t have the full story though.

This seems like a very good place where a budget will work out well. Who knows maybe she also has some spending habits that she did not outline and she does not consider wasteful because they are her priorities. If you setup a monthly allowance then this would handle the problem right away where he uses his allowance on whatever he wants no questions asked (barring illegal or incorrect activities). This has worked very well for my wife and I where we each save but we also spend on certain things and as long as its out of that money then we don’t care. We also discuss large purchases ahead of time.

I think we need more information overall and that judging one way or another based on only one point of view is unfair to the other party. She may just be looking for people to agree with her so that she can go back and say he is wrong because a bunch of random people on the internet said so.

I’d suggest bringing up the issue casually through your own research and seeing how he reacts. Things like “Wow, did you know we spent $### eating out last month?” and “I had no idea all the meaningless purchases we made totaled $###”

Then (assuming he shows the slightest interest) try something like asking if he would be cool with setting a hard number of how often you go out for lunches/dinners.

Whatever you choose as a solution it has to be self-regulated. It’s too easy to set a number and blow past it saying “better luck next month”.

If it’s so bad that it NEEDS to be addressed you need to sit down and have a serious talk about a misalignment of goals. More relationships end due to money issues than most other reasons. Hell, a friend broke off wedding plans because of a lack of seriousness with paying down debt vs spending.

I think if you are serious about getting married, you need to discuss your values. Money is just an expression of your values.

These types of questions might start the ball rolling into a deeper values discussion:

How should your kids be raised?
When do you want to retire?
How important is having a new car?
How much work (home improvements, yard work, financial planning) are each of you willing to do yourselves?

The bottom line: If your values are too out of whack, your financial decisions will be also.

@52 I really enjoy your comment. I’m the one who prefers to eat out once a week and it’s really good to accept responsibility for some of your combined financial mess. Now I willingly give up our weekly outing if it’s not in our weekly budget. Was that on this site about 2 weeks ago? I love it! It’s going great to use the weekly budget.

(My 4th and 5th @ bullets are out of order below. Can’t edit. Sorry.)

DH was more of a spender than I am before we were married. Here are some of the reasons why it seems he was like this:

*He had no long-term goals.
*He had a lot of time on his hands as a single person.
*He didn’t think he could save and always thought he’d work full time.
*I thought his spending choices were stupid.
*He purchased on impulse.
*He watched a lot of TV; therefore, inundated with advertising.
*He was following his parents poor example.
*He’d pay all his bills and spend what was left over.

Here’s what helped him:
@We sat down, individualy wrote down what the future looked like to us in 5/10/15 years. Then shared and discussed.

@We do a lot together now so he doesn’t go to the store because he’s bored. SPEND TIME TOGETHER! Board games, reading, art projects, cooking, house projects and volunteering are just a few ideas to get you started on what you can do together. If you aren’t friends are you really compatible?

@I gave positive feedback on any tiny little improvement he made. Even before he made improvement I commended the things he WAS doing good money-wise. In his case, he had a good job. I highlighted the POTENTIAL (first I saw that positive potential) he could become financially, in line with his goals.

@I heard him suggest to someone the 30 day rule! If he sees something he’d like to purchase that’s higher than his weekly allowance he waits 30 days to see if he still wants it. I think he actually does this with some smaller purchases too!

@We have weekly allowance of $15 (has been $20 in the past and may go back to that) where no judgment can be made on those purchases.

@We had to cut cable to get out of debt. We have an antenna that someone gave us. We purchased a Hauppage DVR (I think they have one at Costco.com) so we still watch *some* football games each week of the season.

@What’s taken a lifetime to ingrain takes awhile to get out of your system. As the SO-be patient!

@Looking at your bank account to find out how much spendable money you have is a recipe for disaster-it means you’re going to spend EVERYTHING. I don’t even know our bank balances, I keep track of it in QuickBooks and spreadsheets. But, I can always tell him how much money we have available to SPEND.

Note: By the time we got married he WAS ready to change. Over the past 3 years we’ve gradually implemented all these steps. The 30 day rule is the most important. He really monitors himself with this, I rarely know about things he wants. I think he’s changed his mindset about needs/wants & the future being more important. I have 100% responsibility for bill paying, saving, transfering money and making him aware of how much we have. He’s on all the accounts but honestly I don’t think he even remembers all the passwords. If there is something big he wants we do discuss it. I check the budget and because of his great progress I try to reward him as much as I can and move things around and find a way to purchase the item he wants. He’s been bugging me for MONTHS about going on a specific weekend trip. ($2000) Well, when I found out he has to work an extra half day a week for the next little bit(I’d LOVE to put that in savings) I compromised my goal for that money in order to reward the hard work he’s doing.

I have an idea to help with the Starbucks gold card, but him a coffee maker that does one premium cup at a time. They are certainly more expensive than normal coffee, but not a daily or twice daily trip to Starbucks! Should start your “latte factor” savings right there with almost no change in lifestyle except for the feeling he gets being a ‘starbucks guy’

Just a thought

I used to date a girl that was a complete spender. She couldn’t save even if she tried. The only way to help them come over to the dark side is to help them realize what they are going to be missing out on in the future if they don’t save now. That’s the difference between our two sides, the now vs the future…

I’m the spender in our relationship. It’s not necessarily bad. I’ve evolved: less impulsive spending and I do lot of the financial planning and tracking now.
The big things we agree on and this keeps us sane: retirement savings, paying off the mortgage, no debt, saving for big ticket items like cars and home improvements.
I would be concerned if impulsive spending got in the way of mid and long term goals. Do you have mutual long term goals together? Sometimes it seems too obvious, but you still need to sit down and map out on paper what you need to have happen to reach goals.
You’re getting married, this is the time to lay it on the table that spending habits and finances will play a part in your future happiness.

All I want to say is that saving up to spend a lot of money on a one-day wedding is not necessarily a better use of money than spending it on many gadgets and evenings out. Maybe he thinks of all that as “your spending” if you are the one that wants an expensive wedding.

I agree with Chickybeth (#30). You can work around this if you recognize your individual strenths. My husband looks at the bills and looks at our money and — seriously — does not see a connection between them. I like managing money; he simply does not understand it at all. So I manage the money. And he makes me laugh, and plays wonderful music, and tells me all the interesting things he has read, and works with the poor, and teaches college, and acts, and is a terrific father, and keeps the cars running, and makes me breakfast in bed. It’s worked for almost 37 years. Look at the positives!

There are a lot of great comments, and all I’m going to add is WHEN you sit down to talk about the future, try talking about what HE WANTS to save for. I guarantee you there is something – and it’s almost certainly not a wedding.

Most guys couldn’t care less about the wedding. Especially with what the stereotypical wedding has become, an overly-glamorized Princess Day with multiple locations, full media coverage, and hundreds of people he barely knows.

It’s hard for some people – especially men – to get excited about it; they would rather just go to Vegas or the JP, and then have a bitchin’ reception. So quit emphasizing the wedding. There are many other, much more important, aspects of planning a life together.

JD asked me to respond to some of the comments asking for my point of view:

Looking back on our early finances, I think I did realize that combining money with JD would be detrimental to not only my finances but my peace of mind. I wanted to be able to have that “cushion” that he never had. But he always held up his end of our joint responsibilities (ie. rent/mortgage and other bills), it’s just that he wasn’t saving a penny! It wouldn’t have taken a very big emergency to really throw us for a loop; luckily, we were both employed, young and in good health, and not given to true extravagance.

One of the reasons I love JD is that we have different strengths and approaches to life. So, even though I was a saver while he was a spender, he helped balance me in a way that was sometimes positive. Now that he’s more financially savvy, we’re making incredible progress on our common goals.

Would I have dumped him because of his financial foolishness? No. Would I have combined finances with him so that he could jeopardize my savings goals? Also no. And most importantly for me, I didn’t help pay his debts or support his lifestyle with my own money.

Yes, he had some pretty bad habits. But so do I (just not where money is concerned) and he knows that I am an adult and get to make my own mistakes. Love is complicated! As we move into our middle age, we’ve learned from each other’s strengths and this has made us better people and a better couple.

I am a reformed spender, my husband is still a spender. Like most people, ours came to a head with a big argument after he’d spent $400 in one month on a non-necessity, despite having little left over after all the bills were paid and zero savings.

Two years later, we have an emergency fund, paid for our last vacation with cash and are very close to paying off some student loans.

Our household duties even reflect our habits: I do the finances, he does all the shopping.
I didn’t even try to curb his spending. I simply took over control of the banking and asked him to check with me before buying anything over $50 or so. We simply discuss everything. You have to have a good relationship before being able to use this system, so it may not work for some people, but for us it gets the job done.

I can only tell you what worked for us. The best way to change anyone is to be the change you want to see. I don’t mean being more frugal, I mean if you want him to be willing sacrifice for you, you need to be willing to do likewise.

When DH and I first got married, he wanted to be a musician. So, to help him achieve this goal I dropped out of college and took a “well paying” (36k at the time) job so that he wouldn’t have to work while pursuing his dream. I didn’t do it to get anything, it was just important to me that he have the opportunity to “follow his dream.” He did that for a few years, with some success, but he eventually decided that it wasn’t something he wanted to continue to pursue and got a “real” job.

Now, we both agree that it is “my turn.” We put all our energy into his dream for the first 5 years of our marriage, and gave it a fighting chance. Now it is my turn to “follow my dream.” What is my dream? Financial independence. It will take longer, but DH was happy when I picked “my goal” because he wants to return the favor. Marriage isn’t just compromise, it is working together for mutual edification. I help him because I want him to be happy, he does likewise for me.

On a more practical level, going to Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace classes really helped us. There wasn’t any new information in them, but attending together put us on the same page.

My boyfriend is the saver and I’m the spender. The way we worked it out is I pay ALL the bills (rent, utilities, cellphones, EVERYTHING) and we get to spend whatever is left over on whatever we feel like (vacations, restaurants, gadgets, etc).

He, on the other hand, puts about 80% of his paychecks into savings and retirement accounts.

This way we are saving a ton of money for early retirement, but I also get to somewhat maintain my “spender” personality.

Sidenote: I do contribute the max amount to my 401k, so I am saving a bit myself and getting the free employer matching contributions. Never pass up free money.

It is hard to tell from Linda’s email if she’s struggling with how to discuss long-term financial goals and discretionary allowances with her partner or she’s concerned that her fiance’s spending habits are exceeding his current income.

If it is former, automatic withdrawals to savings accounts/retirement funds can help if you’re both on board.

If Linda is concerned about her husband’s spending and possible debt, then it is important to have a frank discussion BEFORE exchanging vows. People can change their financial behavior, but it is also important for Linda to protect her own financial well being.

I’ve enjoyed reading the comments and suggestions (especially #59, 62, and 64), and hope to incorporate some of them into my own life with my Big Spender husband.

I’m amazed that it took 62 comments before someone mentioned the wedding! Seriously, hearing that someone is saving for a wedding, rather than a marriage, always sends the red flags up for me! I have to say that I doubt the sincerity of anyone who claims to be a saver, but also needs to “save for the wedding.” It would appear that the 1-day event is more important than everything that comes after. tsk-tsk!

That said, and speaking from my own experience, trying to change someone else’s spending habits and philosophy is futile. Those things come from within, and can’t be manipulated/nagged/guilted into existence.

Perhaps leading by example would help: “You know what, Honey? Our marriage is way more important than a fancy wedding. Let’s put that money aside for a house or retirement instead, and talk about how we want to handle our income and investments in the future. I’m sure we want the same things.”

The trick is not to think you have to first stop spending and then start saving. It didn’t work like that for me at all. I am in a cross-over period where I still have a lot of my bad spending habits, but luckily, thanks to GRS, I have added in some good saving habits and those will eventually dominate my finances. I used to smoke and then I started running, but guess what? When I was up to 4 miles I was down to one cigarette a day – sound ridiculous? Gradually running became more satisfying and smoking less so. Pretty soon I could feel the minimal buzz of my one cigarette and know my run could have felt that much better without it. It’s not a dichotomy or an exact science…maybe Linda’s boyfriend needs to take one thing at a time, save for something short-term, and see how satisfying it can be. That might be the best way to go from lattes to riches.

I am married to a spender who has definitely made great progress in reforming. He is one of those people who really doesn’t want to think about finances, he just wants to know what he can do/afford and what he can’t. This actually makes things really easy on me. I pay all of our bills so that I know things will be paid on time and never overdraw an account. He writes me a check for his portion of the bills twice a month which I cash on his paydays. It’s really easy for him to see exactly how much his fixed monthly expenses are this way, rather than seeing it through a detailed budget like I have.

When he got his current job, he just handed me all the paperwork to fill out, so he has always contributed enough to his 401k to get the match. He knows this, and knows he has money saved in a 401k, but I doubt he could tell you how much he saves each month or what percentage of his income it is. He just doesn’t care! He’d rather I deal with it.

After he got some debts paid off, we discussed how much was a reasonable amount to spend on whatever, and how much needed to be saved every month. It’s funny that what he considers a reasonable amount of spending money is far less than what he was actually spending. I suggest talking to your fiance about what he thinks is reasonable, and then pointing out that he’s spending a lot more than that. After our discussion, we set up automatic withdrawals for a savings amount he thought made sense.

I continue to watch his accounts carefully and let him know if he’s ever getting close to overdrawing. He does not use credit cards, and I don’t think he’s ready to. He has a great rewards account with Chase though that makes the “lost” rewards easier on me (I’m kind of a nut about credit card rewards – I’ll charge 50 cents to my 2% rewards card!)

Some months he’s totally fine, other months he spends close to everything in his checking account, but it doesn’t matter because he’s already paid his bills and put money into savings.

I also am concerned about the letter writer’s tone and wonder if there just may be a compatiblity problem. I really like and can relate to #4 Pamela’s entry.

My husband is much more of a spender than I am and he came to our marriage with six figures of debt, while I was debt free, after having spent the previous five years digging myself out of 40k of credit card and student loan debt. He’s still more of a spender than I am, but that’s not bad, it’s just different. We obviously don’t have all the details here, but it sure sounds like Linda’s boyfriend is compromising but she wants her way or the highway.

We do an adult allowance (smartest thing we ever did!) and we make accommodations for each other’s ways. I’ll pack his lunch because he doesn’t want to be bothered, but he won’t spend money on lunch if his lunch is already made for him. He was stopping every morning for caffeine, so we kept trying different travel mugs until we could find one that suited him and now he doesn’t stop anymore.

He’s typically the one who identifies the need for a big purchase while I determine how much we can spend. I handle all the finances and he’s glad I do. Dave Ramsey doesn’t approve but he’s not in our marriage. It works for us (going on 16 years). We expect to be MND’s at some point in the next 3 years, sooner if the stock market cooperates.

Judging will never change anyone, that’s for sure. Linda should sit down with her fiance and set some savings goals:
-How much do they want to save for a house, an emergency fund, etc?
-When do they want to meet those goals?
-Then how much will they each contribute monthly?

Linda, since she’s the motivated one, should set up joint accounts for these goals, and help her fiance set up an automatic withdrawal from his account for the agreed upon amounts. She’ll contribute too.

If they can do that then who cares what the fiance spends his fun money on! Our purchases, be they comic books, a house cleaner, guitars or flowers, will always seem silly and unnecessary to someone. So I think Linda should get past the judgement to the root of her fears – which is that they won’t be able to save money, and focus on a joint plan to tackle that. It can be done!

This is a tricky one, because of course people can’t be changed, they can only decide to change — and nagging definitely has the opposite effect as one intends.

My DH is responsible with money, but he also wants to have a certain level of fun and entertainment in the “now” rather than save everything for the uncertain “later” (and he has a valid point). I’m a saver through and through, and always will be – it’s just the way I’m wired. So for many years while I was at home eating KD for lunch with the kids so we could save money, he was out with friends or business associates eating in nice restaurants. This drove me crazy and made me resent him, but what was I supposed to do? Spend more money to punish him? Leave him??? Our income finally caught up with his lifestyle and now I don’t mind that he spends money because we’re saving a generous amount too, which was always my goal. Now we can both enjoy ourselves guilt free.

So the moral of my story is that, in the end if you want to make it work, sometimes you have to change your perception rather than change the other person.

Just because someone is saving for a wedding doesn’t mean they are having some extravagant $50,000 wedding. Weddings cost money and there is nothing wrong with wanting your family and friends to celebrate with you on that special day. Even if you elope in Vegas or go the the JP and have an awesome reception you are still going to spend a good amount of money. I don’t know the poster’s situation and neither do you so could we stop assuming she wants some ridiculously expensive wedding and couldn’t care less about the actual marriage?

He likes gadgets and eats out more then he should? Sounds like a typical bachelor to me.

Seriously though, this guy doesn’t sound like he’s a spendthrift. Cut him some slack. Unless theres worse spending habits we didn’t hear about then I tihnk maybe Linda may be the one who needs to lighten up here. She can’t expect her fiance to change entirely over night to suit her exact specifications. She says he has changed a ‘lot’ and she should be happy with that. Maybe Linda is a miser? How much has she changed her spending and financial habits to suit him? Should she lighten up and not get upset if he wants to eat out dinner once in a while or buy the new apple iThing?

What I think they should do is have a frank and positive discussion about spending. When Trent at Simple Dollar wrote about this nearly a month ago my suggestion was that she and her fiance should make lists of their individual spending priorities and then compare them. They should also make sure that they each now how important different financial goals are and what expecations are. Does she think they need to save 25% of their income while he thinks saving 5% is OK? Or are they closer to agreeing? Is having money in the bank very very important to her and maybe he doesn’t realize that?
Maybe he ‘gets’ that saving for a wedding is important but he just doesn’t ‘get’ that its super duper important and Linda can’t sleep at night since she obsesses about worrying over it.

I going to take a little different perspective, Linda needs to show him an easy way to save. I recently wrote an article called “Free Money for Retirement” that describes what saving as little as a lunch can do for you. She should read the article.

My partner and I have been on a 2 year journey slowly addressing some of these same hurdles. Here are a few things that have really worked toward getting us on the same page:

-the first thing i did when we combined finances was to create our net worth calculation. it was negative! It was a powerful at first to show him the numbers to de-personalise the situation. For him there was a big difference between what he thought the situation was to the actual reality of it.

-we agreed on adult allowances, the money goes into both our personal accounts every Friday and i don’t really care (or check, or ask) how he spends his amount

-for the remaining money each week that actually gets into our hands (a very small amount) we use for food, gas and any incidentals, we have a quick chat once a week to allocate how we will spend it that week. Then we take it out in cash (so we can’t overspend at the grocery store, etc)

Hope this helps! We are still very different money personalities but both of us understand and accept where the other person is coming from and try to work together

28 years ago- I was the spender.
10 years ago- he was the spender.
Now- we have separate allowances and have saved six figures easily.
My two kids are moving into the “saving for house mode”. Both have shifted their relationships (one married/one engaged) from eating out on a moment’s notice to dinner and a DVD at home. The transitions have gone well.

People change if it is important to them. If money is the center of your life and your arguments, think before you leap.
We never really argued about money since when it got short- one of us got a second job. We both knew when to cut back. It seems our children (and their significant others) are taking a page from our book and making it work for them as well.

Wow, I do see a lot of red flags here. Most notebly that Linda is presenting her way of life as the ‘the good and virtuous Saver’ and his as the ‘thoughtless Spender’. Really, as long as no one is racking up tons of debt that can’t be paid there is no good or bad here. BUT there defintely seems to be different. The amount of criticism that she has for her future husband is actually quite shocking to me. No, you shouldn’t get married expecting someone to change, that said a good marriage ALWAYS requires compromise of some kind. You have to believe that the WE is more important that the I most of the time. My husband and I are actually pretty similar in spending habits, of course he would never spend $3 to sit in a coffee shop and relax, or $100 for green shoes, but I dont’ understand spending as much as he does on motorcycles, the thing is that we each know what is important to the other, and put value on it because it makes our spouse happy. Likewise we work together to establish financial goals, that we’re both behind. We have seperate money, but combined goals. If you realyl feel that you are so far off, there is defintely some discussion that needs to be had before you get married. Maybe you’ll talk about things, and you’ll feel better about it, and have a stonger relationship for it. Maybe you’ll find out that he has no interest in giving up his latte habit despite how you feel about it, and it does just highlight a real imcompatability about goals and planning. If your that ticked off about latte’s (and haven’t told him) how are you going to approach things like, I want to take off 6mo to have a baby, or I really think we should get the smaller house, or I’m ready to retire – but you have to work till your dead and I have no one to spend my retirement with.

My husband was in the same situation before we married. Spending $ on coffee every morning, buying take-out indiscriminetly. When we discussed wedding plans, we reviewed a budget, he liked what he liked. But realized that if he liked something we couldn’t afford yet we were not going to do it.

I agreed to a caribbean honeymoon as long as we could pay it off within a month. The deal was that he’d have to give up his morning coffee and make his own. Eat breakfast at home, minimize going out to eat and cooking more. It was a start. It went from there to pay off the wedding, first home purchase, baby #1, second home purchase and baby #2.

My husband is a spender. I’m the saver. I create the budget and pay the bills. He gets an “allowance” every pay period to spend (or save) anyway he likes (books, CDs, magazines, etc). He has to save up his allowance if he wants something more expense. I tell him how much goes into his 401k. Recently he learned he has an IRA and kids have 529 accounts. Wouldn’t work for everyone but he is okay giving up control. He has no interest in planning and saving.

If you feel this much friction BEFORE the wedding, please be brutally honest if there really should be a wedding. Listen to your gut and you instincts. I understand that issues can be worked out and many here have provided a road map and solutions. HOWEVER, make sure that you figure these things out before the wedding. Do not go into the marriage thinking these problems can be resolved later. In all likelihood, the issues that you are confronting now will only get worse. Been there, done that, and all I’m getting is this lousy divorce.

I’m surprised by how critical a lot of comments have been towards Linda. The guy has a Starbucks gold card, and that’s not the only luxury he allows himself – his spending habits do need to change. Linda wants him to develop better habits, but I don’t see anything about her question that presents her as perfect.

The fact of the matter is people do need to save. If he’s saving 5% of his no longer huge salary, and spending tons on lattes, vacations, and iGadgets then he’s not saving enough. If he’s saving 50% of his salary and still has money left over for those other things, then fine, but that doesn’t seem to be the picture she’s portraying.

Likewise, if someone saves 5% of their salary because that is all they can reasonably afford, then that’s fine too. Everyone has to start somewhere. But if you can only afford 5% because of the unnecessary luxuries in your life, then you need to adjust your budget.

I will agree with one thing heartily, though. If the savings is all going towards throwing a multi-thousand dollar wedding, then the money would be just as well spent on lattes. Having been married last year, I promise you the day will be a blur and be over before you know it. If you’re kissing away $20k in the process, you’re going to wish you put the money to better use.

I can completely relate to this, because just like you all, in our relationship, there’s a Spender and a Saver. I’m the Spender, but I’m also the really organized one, so I’ll provide what has helped within our household. First, I did make a lot of day-to-day changes based on the influence of my Saver boyfriend, and he has acknowledged that I’ve become a lot better about it since we started dating 6 years ago. Now, I’m the one obsessing about us saving for goals, although by nature he is still much more thrifty than I am. What we’ve been doing is basically putting a set amount of money into a shared account for our common goals – paying bills, buying groceries, and saving for big things like our future wedding, vacations, etc. The rest of our money from our paychecks is kept in our personal accounts for us to deal with – so if I want to buy a new pair of boots, that’s my choice, so long as I first paid into our shared goals account. So what might help Linda is to set very specific, concrete goals with her fiance, such as a fund for a house, and together decide how much it will take each month to get to that goal. Then, make depositing that amount into some account an absolute must, not an option! Once she’s more secure that even despite his spending, they’re still working together towards their shared goals, she may find that she cares less about what he spends the rest of his income on. Good luck!!

So? What does that mean? It implies he buys coffee. We don’t know how much coffee. Maybe he spends $4 daily on coffee and maybe he spends $4 weekly. Is buying an occasional Mocha somehow abhorrent behavior that must change or he’s a bad person?
Does Linda even know how much coffee he buys or is she making assumptions?

I’m not saying the guy is frugal but lets not automatically assume that frequenting Starbuks means you’re irresponsible with money. My wife tends to buy coffee drinks 1-2 times a week and we save >30% of our income.

A lot of relationships have the dynamic of one person being the spender, and one person being the saver. I don’t know that this is reason to throw a fiance to wolves. The “trick” is how to communicate (with honesty to ourselves and others) about these differences. It sounds like they each value spending their money in different ways. NOTE: A LOT of couples do. The relationhip can go a long way when each person in the relationship begins to understand how they value spending/saving their money, and come to a mutual agreement about how they want to do this. If they aren’t able to come to an agreement in a healthy way, then they might have bigger problems. We are talking about difference in values and goals, but I don’t know any couple where these always line up perfectly. It’s how we navigate the difference that make the success or failure of the relationship…including how we spend/save money.

It is not clear if the spending is compulsive (something outside of his control). It does sound like she is experiencing some anxiety, and I’m not sure if it is warranted or not…non the less she is uncomfortable with his habits.

To examine if his spending behaviors are compulsive/addictive spending they each would want to look at how it is impacting his/her and their life. Does his spending prevent them from paying their bills on time? Does his spending prevent them from taking care of medical needs? Does his spending interfere with relationships with friends, family, etc. (i.e is borrowing from friends family and not being able to pay it back). Continuing to run up debt etc.

Likewise, He/She and they can evaluate where her feelings are coming from about him spending money. Does she tend to “hoard” money and have a difficult enjoying “letting go” of her money. In the scenario above, it is just not clear.

Exploring our own responsed to the above scenario can give us insights into our own values, beliefs, mindset, and “blindspots” about our own relationship with money.

I was a spender and what changed me was learning about investing. Now instead if getting my thrills buying a new toy I get that feeling buying stocks (index ETFs of course.) Investing is way more fun and rewarding than saving… I guess I am still a spender of sorts.

If you can’t make it on your own with your own income than that is very sad, but you don’t find a partner to utilize their income for your goals. Tis has everything to do with worrying about each other’s spending habits. Set your own personal goals, save for yourself, spend for yourself and stop worrying about others. Otherwise you will be an unhappy person because your most likely unhappy with yourself.

Automation, automation, automation. Have him direct a certain percentage of his paycheck to the down payment or whatever savings goal and then let him spend as much as he wants. Separate bank accounts help too.

I have a suggestion. I track everything I spend down to the penny. In this situation, I would tell my spouse she can spend what ever she wants, on the condition that I track everything and keep it in our budget software (YNAB, from YouNeedABudget.com).

A couple times a month, I would just show her totals of everything that she spends. This method would require a lot of discipline and hassle on your end, but I think the most powerful way to get your message across is to simply show them what they are currently spending. So much spending is mindless; when you become aware of where all the money is going, and how much you could really save if you cut it out, that in itself becomes a powerful motivator.

I’ve never tried this, so I don’t know if it would work. But I wish you luck.

I wish I’d paid more attention to those “red flag gut checks” when my husband and I were dating. I bailed him out of many $100-$500 financial emergencies, and we never really discussed financial goals or went to premarital counseling (we were both in our early 30s and thought “We know what we’re getting into”). Of course I love him, but thousands of dollars in overdraft fees, gallons of tears cried, and no house or car ownership to show for all these years of working have not done our marriage any favors. When he was laid off, he kept spending like he wasn’t, and I took a second job at a retail store to halfway make ends meet. When I told him, no, we can’t afford daily Starbucks/Chili’s/steak for dinner/a MacBook Pro/PS3/iTunes shows, he’d just go alone and get what he wanted, and pout or yell at me when I pointed out that we needed that money for other things like rent and electricity. I had (HAD) good credit, so he could get store credit cards and he had access to our checking account. The IRS came calling after we’d been married over a year–I had no idea he never filed income tax returns for the first 10 years of his work life. Talking about shared goals, setting budgets together, IRS calls, getting eviction notices…. none of this will necessarily cause someone to become internally motivated.

You need to decide, as other posters have stated, whether you can live with this man “AS IS.” If not, and you don’t want to go the his/hers/ours financial route (what we now do), LEAVE HIM. Do not put yourself through what I’ve gone through. It’s a miserable, frustrating, and very depressing situation. You may love other things about him, love them very much even, but you can’t live on love alone. As another poster said, spending habits are about shared values, and you need to figure out if your values are in line.

On a personal note about weddings: we got married in front of a few friends at the Justice of the Peace office, went on a European honeymoon, and returned home to throw ourselves a “Wedding Party”. It was awesome! Zero wasted dollars on wilting flowers, fancy outfits and rental fees, and just a few hundred spent on booze and food at our big party. No stress, plenty of time to hangout and share memories/pics, and we had a blast. Don’t feel pressured to throw a $25K wedding… weddings are for everyone else to enjoy.

#89 – You’re saving over 30% of your income – that’s great! And it’s exactly what I’m saying. If you can afford to have considerable savings and frequent Starbucks daily, then by all means caffeinate away! But if he isn’t saving, or is saving only a small amount of his no longer great salary, then it’s probably time to sacrifice the Starbucks and the iGadgets.

In our case, I think simply having good role models – myself, and some friends – was the key. When you grow up in low-working class living paycheck to paycheck, week to week, you simply don’t realise that there are other ways to do it. Through me, he saw that you COULD save up and buy big ticket items – a computer, a holiday, whatever – and that car dramas, be it repairs or a whole new vehicle, and we’ve had plenty of those – didn’t need to be a total emergency. He does like his toys and shiny new things, and realising he COULD have them if he saved was a revelation. I smile when I think back to the day he bought his Xbox 360.

Oh, and redundancy also forced him to learn the importance of having a savings account.

Wow, some great comments here. I’m not getting married anytime soon, but I’m bookmarking this post for reference. Key points I’ve gotten from this thread: A)you can’t expect your partner to change (at least not radically or quickly) and B) communication and compromise are the solution, if there is one.

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